[game_edu] Placement problems

[Peter Border]

Hello game educators:

I have a topic I would like to open up a discussion on: placement. Frankly this is my biggest worry. I teach at a career college
in Minnesota, far from both coasts, and there just is not a whole lot of game industry going on here. We do have a large
QA facility for Activision and I push that heavily on my students. We have been blessed (there is no other word) with a very active IGDA
chapter which I also push heavily. But aside from those two, it's all small shops and the local indie game designers. They all do great stuff but
there just isn't a lot of hiring that happens at a 3-person shop. 

Career colleges have some advantages over regular colleges- they move MUCH faster, for instance. However the emphasis is completely on
getting people into jobs and if your program doesn't do that it will be cancelled. So I have to get people into the game industry or else.
Luckily, my program is basically about teaching people to be game programmers rather than artists, with skills that transfer into many high
demand areas like databases or web applications, so it's certainly not hopeless. Still, it would be nice to place more students into game 
industry jobs than we have been.

Is anyone else out there in a similar state? Does anyone have any hints? Maybe I'm missing something, but I think there are a lot of 
programs hitting this same wall. Game design is pretty sexy and recruitment is easy, but the other end of the pipeline can be a problem.

Happy equinox!

Peter Border
Game and Application Design Chairman
Globe University/Minnesota School of Business
1401 West 76th St
Richfield, MN 55423
pborder at msbcollege.edu